April 10, 2013
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Uncovered Brass
Slide me into the flames
Wrap me tight for the fire
Let no man see my wrinkled flesh and thinning hair
No long worms will curl through me
Flash my bones to ash and sift for my gold
Let me rest awhile in uncovered brass,
in the light, above the dirt that I toiled in.
Then cast me into the breeze
so I may always drift above it.
Slide me into the flames
DSS 4/25/2011**** An now a new one. ****
place our hope in mighty god
mighty we hope he will be
hope not placed in how we are
but hope in how he will be
we think what will come someday
will be what god says will be
when today all we can have
is how good (a) man can beDSS
Comments (7)
Love the first one! The second was a little sobering but hope is alive and to that I cling.
So enjoyed these two – the first especially: “flash my bones to ash and sift for my gold.” Wonderful! Reminds me of viking burials at sea = ships aflame and sinking. I will have to tell you of my father’s internment some time . . .
@murisopsis - yes, I like the first one too. The second is a character I let out to spice up spiritual conversations.
@SandraErickson - I do want to hear of your father’s internment! I have gone to only a couple memorable funeral services and admire families that go through with the deceased wishes. Thank you for the rec!
@Iamsurrounded -
In Vermont, the ground freezes to hard and too deep to dig, so if someone dies after a certain time in the fall, they are kept “on ice” so to speak until the spring when the ground thaws enough to be dug up. My father died at the end of November (in the middle of a snow/ice storm) and was cremated. In June my brother came up from Texas and we all assembled on the hillside cemetery that overlooks Lake Willoughby in Westmore, (northern) Vermont.
My boys and I were there long before anyone else, except the minister and my father’s box of ashes. It was a cold, windy day, so the minster stayed in his car. While my son’s and I hung with my dad and waited for the others to arrive, we made up this elaborate plan for one of them to steal my dad’s ashes and dash down the (very steep) hill to the road, where son number two and I would meet him with the car and drive to the far end of the lake and hand the ashes over to some friends who just happened to be scuba diving that day so my dad , a Navy man during WWII, could have the burial at sea that he always wanted. I laugh every time I think of it. I am the red sheep of the family, anyway – so it wouldn’t have mattered, that much. Except it would have my boys and I VERY happy. Truly, I wish I had.
Guess I’ll just have to give him a vicarious burial at sea in some story, sometime…
@SandraErickson - Oh that is a great story, wish you could have pulled it off ! Write a short story about, it would be a great memorial to him.
My wife attended my brother in laws funeral and all of the attendees were allowed to grab a handful of his ashes as the urn was passed and scatter them as they wished under his favorite tree. I liked that idea very much. In your case you and your boys could have scattered your handful in the water, even if the others in the family didn’t want to.
I have a regret about my father’s too. He told me on his death bed he wanted to use a very large rock, a small bolder really from his boyhood farm for a tomb stone. I was the only one in the family that wanted to honor his request and was out voted. I had arrangements made to have the rock sliced in half and engraved but they didn’t want to go beyond the traditional. Proves that you can’t rule from the grave I guess. A big regret for me.